Death By Bakery
by Channel D
Summary: Crack!fic. At Christmastime, the team searches for clues to a sailor's death at the bakery he frequented. Crossover with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. No, I don't know what I was thinking, so stop asking. Mild McGiva, to top things off.


**Death By Bakery**  
by channelD

_Rating:_ K+  
_Crossover with:_ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (_Oy_. I know.)  
_Genre:_ Crack!fic/Action/Adventure/Lunacy. Inspired by Christmas talk, too little sleep and too much caffeine,  
_Setting:_ Washington DC, December  
_Featuring:_ The Team  
_Pairing:_ Mild McGiva  
_Words:_ Approx. 3,180

- - - - -

Disclaimer: I own nothing of NCIS, nor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Dude.

- - - - -

Marley was dead: to begin with.

Percival "Fishhead" Marley, Seaman E-1, had been found, dead as a doornail and deader still, down by the docks. It was an early end to what might have been an illustrious career with the Navy as a Whale Spotter Third Class.

Young people do die, some with as few as Marley's 19 years on them. But few were found at autopsy to have a body composition of 50 per cent refined sugar as Marley's was. He could not have been getting that much sugar in his meals at the base. With a little investigator work, his off-the-radar movements were traced to a factory-cum-bakery just over the Maryland line. Nothing was remarkable about this almost quaint operation, other than perhaps the name: _Sugar Terminal_. How telling for poor Marley.

On this cold December night, a scant week before Christmas, the foursome pulled up in a car, studying the closed and darkened factory before entering. Marley had been a friend to them; they were now determined to solve the mystery of his high-calorie death,

- - - - -

The factory loomed against the pale December moon. It and the grounds were quiet now, late at night; still as a bowl of vanilla pudding; dark as a death-by-chocolate cake. Unlike factories that ran around the clock, this one sported no graveyard shift, since most people (other than college students) didn't look for dessert with their breakfast.

Gibbs, Ziva, Tim and Tony left their cars and walked slowly up to the eerie-by-virtue-of-darkness (and stale vanilla extract smell) building. Gibbs had in his pocket the warrant to search the building. The owners could protest all they wanted to, but word was they were vacationing in Sweet Life, Florida. No sweet (or otherwise) words had come down from them yet.

Tony picked the lock on the main entrance under the flickering lamplight, and in less than a minute they were inside…and gagging on the thick, thick odor of years of sugar that had saturated the walls of the factory like an invisible mildew. Even Willy Wonka would likely find an excuse to be somewhere else. But oh, were Sugar Terminal products popular in the DC area! From_ Octopus Pies_ to _Bird Seed Butterscotch Bars,_ there was no name so venerated as Sugar Terminal.

"We're looking for records of sales to Marley," Gibbs reminded his team as they stood in the lobby with hands over their noses. "We need to find the sales office. You weren't able to pull up floor diagrams, McGee?"

"No, boss. The company isn't publicly traded, so there's little real information online. The county assessor's office might have something, but without a lot of time-wasting coercion, we'd need to contact them during business hours." Tim's eyes stung and his mouth felt dry. He staggered to the water cooler and filled a cup, only to find the "water" was really lemon-lime soda, with double sugar and double caffeine, by the taste of it. _It's actually rather nice…_ Reluctantly, he drew his attention back to the group, as Gibbs beckoned the team on.

The corridor leading away from the foyer was dimly lit, and grew ever darker as they went on. When they reached the point of turning on flashlights, the corridor suddenly T'd.

"David, McGee—take the left branch," Gibbs directed. "DiNozzo, with me. Everyone, stay alert."

"How much trouble can we get into in a bakery?" Tim asked, just before walking into a wall-mounted fire extinguisher. _"Ow…"_

"I will take care of him," Ziva said to the others, smirking, and taking Tim's arm. He shrugged it off with a sliver of anger, but when she took it again, this time he didn't protest.

Gibbs rolled his eyes, and set off with Tony.

- - - - -

Their flashlights swept the lonely right branch corridor, which was enlivened only now and then by faded posters in display cases urging job safety and the promotion of all things sweet. "I'd like to meet the workers,' Tony remarked, shining his flashlight on the cartoon drawing of an almost Socialistically-happy working team. "Wonder if they're all fit and trim? And what do they have on their coffee breaks? Cake, or carrot sticks?"

Gibbs snorted, then stopped. Something felt amiss. It was the surface of the floor. They had gone off tattered tile at some point, aften making a turn and passing through open double doors, and now the floor felt smooth, almost slick. He tapped his shoe on it, and it rang. Almost like…_aluminum??_ And there was a granular feeling on it, too; finer than sand…

"Hey, boss," Tony called; his face just a shadow in the dark. "I'd swear this floor is starting to slope to the left, just a bit." His flashlight beam did a figure eight on the floor beneath him. Other than looking gray and dusty, the floor was unremarkable.

"Don't inhale too much sugar, DiNozzo," Gibbs smirked. "It'll rot your brain."

But with one step more, both were suddenly tumbling, with yells, as the floor had taken a steep pitch. Gibbs bumped into something large and hard, and gripped it. With his other hand he grabbed Tony and halted his roll.

Gasping, Tony likewise grabbed the other side of the small boulder that had saved Gibbs. "Man! What's this all about??"

"Unless I miss my guess," said Gibbs, putting together the clues, "we're at the rim of a giant bowl of cake batter." He sniffed the air. "Spice cake, I think."

"Yeeesh! What saved us?"

Gibbs felt the boulder under his arm. "I think it's a giant sugar lump. C'mon, let's get out of here before it breaks off." Cautiously, they crept back up the rim and out of the bowl.

Tony pulled himself to his feet, after crawling back to the safety of the wall. He trained the flashlight beam across the room, but the beam disappeared in the darkness. "Holy–! Just how big are bakery mixing bowls, anyway?!"

Gibbs had his light sweeping the beige surface of the bowl, about ten feet below where they were. "I don't know, but it's getting warm in here. I think the baking cycle has started. We've got to move on."

"But there's no one here! Who started the baking?"

"Haven't you ever had a coffee maker on a timer, DiNozzo? The second shift probably loads the ingredients, and then fresh baked products are ready for the first shift to unload."

"They must use forklifts," Tony mumbled. "I'll call Ziva and McGeek and warn them."

- - - - -

Tim and Ziva had had more success. The sales office was not far down their corridor. Tim searched databases on the room's computer while Ziva rummaged through file cabinets.

She was skimming a file folder labeled _Brown Sugar Blowouts: Happy Intoxication_ when her cell phone rang. "David…Repeat, please?... All right. We will be careful. You be careful, too."

"Gibbs?" asked Tim, not looking up.

"No, Tony. He had some story about them nearly falling into a giant bowl of cake batter!"

This made Tim stop and turn. "What kind?"

"I do not know! I did not ask! Why is that important?!"

He blushed and shrugged. It wasn't.

"Anyway," she said, "I am concerned. There must be a higher concentration of sugar in the air at their end of the building. They are hallucinating."

"Well, we'll try to speed things up in here, then." A few more keystrokes, and then his fist pumped the air. "Got it!"

Ziva ran to look over his shoulder. "That is certainly incriminating! Print it out, and let us go find Tony and Gibbs."

After 20 minutes in the well-lit sales office, Ziva and Tim found their eyes having trouble adjusting to the corridor's dimness. That could explain why they took a wrong turn through an open set of double doors (not the ones they'd originally come through). Fruit scents, heavily sweetened, surrounded them.

"Something's not right here," said Tim. "Are we in a dead end? There's no light ahead."

"Afraid of the dark, McGee?" Ziva mocked lightly. "Want me to hold your hand?"

He glared at her, knowing there was no safe answer to that. _Mom was always after me to eat my vegetables. She'd be so disappointed to learn I'd died in a bakery…_

_"McGee!"_ Ziva suddenly grabbed him. He was about to shake her off, when he realized—too late—that she was falling…and taking him with her.

- - - - -

The foursome entered the building through the loading docks. "Let me see the floor plans again, dude," said the one in the red mask.

"Here you go, Raphael. Don't muss them, though; they're the only copies we have," Donatello said with a silent prayer.

"Bro! You have so little faith in me!" In emphasis of his anger, Rafael wadded the blueprints up, though stopped himself before he could throw them down into the snow. He grinned foolishly and tried to smooth them out as his teammates gave him stern looks.

"Let's move in," sighed Leonardo. "I don't know who those guys were who went in the front, but on the chance that they're working against us, we need to get the records on poor Marley before they do."

_"Justice!"_ the four cried, and rapped fists together.

- - - - -

Ziva's scream of alarm was cut off as she fell beneath the surface. Strange substances surrounded her; familiar, but…out of place and therefore unidentifiable, so far. _Do not think about that!_ she told herself. _Get out, first!_

She was surrounded by mildly-thick walls of a material that nonetheless gave way to a gentle touch. It was too dark to see what it was.A fruit-flavor—cherry—was close by. Along with something else. Banana? No, lime. Something billowy and sweet (of course) rode by her, as if on its way elsewhere. _Whipped cream?!_ She fought and fought, and finally managed to climb onto the slippery surfaces. When her hand suddenly came in contact with her mouth, the mystery was partially solved. _Gelatin! This is a giant bowl of cubes of Jell-o!__ Red and green, for Christmas!_

In alarm, she looked around for her teammate. "McGee??... _McGee!!"_She could feel her heart thump, as she swung her flashlight wildly. _Which direction did he enter??_ There! There seemed to be a little depression in a whipped cream pile, about 5 feet away. Maybe…

She took a deep breath, then dove in gracefully, keeping a tight hold on her flashlight. This wasn't water; there were actually air spaces between most of the cubes, where the whipped cream hadn't yet filtered down. But that wasn't much. She could see a little, and the flashlight beam shone through the red and green cubes for about ten feet.

And then she saw him, head down, not moving. Pushing against the cubes, Ziva swam toward him, and, grabbing him by the collar, pulled him to the surface, as her flashlight tumbled into the sweet, wiggly depths.

"Breathe, McGee!" she commanded, but he seemed to remain still. _"Breathe!!_ It will be hard enough to get you out of here as it is…!"

And then things got worse. A whirring sound started up, and the cubes started moving as the mixer came on line. _"No!!"_ Ziva struggled to reach for her phone, not daring to let go of Tim for an instant.

"Ziva!! Stay calm! We'll pull out McGee first!!"

_Gibbs. Thank God._ "When you are ready, here is my hand," she said, smiling weakly.

"Got you!" said two voices, as her hands were seized and she looked up to see Tony…and a human-sized turtle. _The sugar air has gotten to me,_ Ziva thought, and tried to keep from passing out.

- - - - -

After a brief round of CPR—Ziva on the mouth—Tim coughed up gelatin and was soon doing well. The agents and now four turtles retreated to the light and comparative comfort of the sales office.

"Marley was a friend to us, A bro. A _mensch_," said the blue-masked turtle who'd identified himself as Leonardo, as he patted his ninja swords. "He so wanted to be a part of the Navy. When we heard he'd died, we just had to come down here to Washington for answers."

"And Justice," snarled Raphael. "Someone's going to be in for a world of hurtin' when I'm done with him."

"That's for the courts to decide," Gibbs remarked. "We're convinced that this wasn't a suicide, or an accidental death. Do you have any idea who could have wanted Marley dead?"

"All we know," said Michelangelo, "is that Marley particularly liked their _Double-Chocolate-Cherry-Submarines_. You know; four cherries riding on a banana half, covered with chocolate? It's a frozen thing."

"Sounds pretty tasty," said Tony. "Have you ever tried this place's turtles? They're…" He cut off, after seeing the young warriors turn green…more so than before. "Oh, sorry; I didn't mean…"

"It's all right," said Leonardo, with a slight cough. "They're not _real_ turtles. Just the name, though…"

"Yeah. Sorry again."

Gibbs cleared his throat. "Did Marley have any run-ins with the company? Send them a letter of complaint; anything like that?"

Donatello snapped his fingers. "The _Bug Balls!"_

"The what?"

"The _Bug Balls!_ White chocolate and apricot or grape syrup over a crunchy center of crisped rice and caramel, that crunched like…er, well, like crisped rice. I guess."

"Never heard of them, and I thought I knew all the Sugar Terminal products," said Tim, sipping another cup of the lemon-lime water.

"They haven't been released to the market. As a loyal customer by mail order, Marley was asked to participate in a study group for a new product a few months ago. He emailed us about it; he was so thrilled to have been chosen."

"And this was the _Bug Balls_," said Ziva.

"Yes. Only they turned out to be terrible. At least the batch that Marley was sent. Dry, tasteless, and smelly, even. He sent a piece to us to be analyzed; he was that surprised that any food product could be so bad."

Donatello, the quiet, bright one, spoke up. "I did an analysis in my lab. You'd be amazed at the garbage in there. Iron filings. Dirt…let's leave it at that; it was awful. The fruit syrup had also gone bad. This was a product that was a failure before it left the factory."

"Do you think they were trying to hush Marley up, after he complained?"

"Not only tried, but succeeded," said a new voice, and they turned to see two men standing in the doorway, with guns drawn. "And you're not going to tell anyone."

"I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard that, man," said Michelangelo. With less time that it takes to tell, the turtles with their swords, sai, nunchaku and staff had disarmed the two men and subdued them.

Tony tried again, this time with a smile. "Do you think they were trying to hush Marley up, after he complained?"

"I do not know," said Ziva, giving one of the men a light poke with her knife. "Were you?"

"Boss," Tim called from the computer. "You know that earlier record I found on Marley? Well, now I've found the records on the _Bug Balls_. A woman in Michigan died shortly after eating one, and a teenager in California became very ill. This internal memo said Marley hadn't become too sick, but he was threatening to discredit Sugar Terminal all over the net."

"Did he make any other threats? Mention blackmail?"

"Not that I can see. He just wanted the company to keep producing the products he knew and loved. So they sent him a case of products, with…" he squinted to read the fine print… "four times the usual amount of sugar. Ouch. The products were coated with a chemical that made one want to keep eating. All that sugar in his system…it couldn't take it."

"What a way to go," Raphael sighed. "Poor Marley."

"Almost as bad as drowning in Jell-o, eh, Probie?" Tony teased.

"Yeah. Particularly since it wasn't strawberry-banana. That's my favorite." He smiled at his little joke, but also of the vague, soft memory of Ziva's lips on his as he'd come to. Not that he'd ever admit to that. Yet.

- - - - -

"You sure you want to do this, Jen?" Gibbs asked the next morning, as they waited by the Isaac Hull gate for the Turtles to arrive. "You haven't even read the whole report of the case yet."

"I know that those boys fought well, acted with skills with weapons, and helped rescue Ziva and Tim. What more is there to know?"

"And this is Diversity-in-Hiring month, and you probably have a quota to meet."

"Is it? Do I?" she asked, innocently.

The Turtles were right on time at NCIS. Soon , after undergoing quick background checks, and being sworn in, the ninja quartet were seated at desks near Gibbs' team—when they weren't wandering around, checking out the wonders of the squad room.

"I don't know about this, boss," Tony whispered. "Is this legal? Hiring them? They're not 21. They don't have college degrees. And they're not even _human!"_

"Don't be a speciesist, DiNozzo," Gibbs smirked. "The Director can bend a few rules if she wants to."

Donatello had drawn his chair up to Tim's desk, and was deep in discussion with him. "Of course, this will make a lot more sense to you after you've been through the course at FLETC," said Tim. "And learned the regs."

"Did you feel like you knew more than your instructors?" Don asked him in a low tone. Tim looked startled, then they both laughed, conspiratorially.

_Us…NCIS agents!_ Leonardo thought, looking out the window. _Cowabunga!_

Abby bounced into the squad room, a near ream of printouts in her hand. "Gibbs! Gibbs! I got the results on the Thorndyke case. You won't believe what I saw in—" Suddenly noticing the Turtles, she stared, looked at the _Caf-Pow!_ In her other hand (her fourth such drink of the morning); looked back at the Turtles, back at the _Caf-Pow!_back at the Turtles, back at the _Caf-Pow!_...then dumped the half-full _Caf-Pow!_ cup in the nearest trash can, and ran back to her lab without looking back.

"I'm gonna love this place," sighed Michelangelo. "Dudes! Do you like pizza?"

Jenny came in then, rolling a cart. "Since it's almost Christmas, I thought you might like some treats with the morning coffee break. There's danishes, spice cake, chocolate pudding, and Jell-o—"

A door closing made her look up. The squad room had emptied out!

"Odd," she remarked. "Oh well; all the more for me. Sugar Terminal _does_ do good desserts." She studied the coupon that was in her pocket that had accomoanied the order. 50 per cent off on the new produce, _Bug Balls._ _Hmmm._ _Well, __the SECNAV does have__ that big party coming up…_

_- END -_


End file.
